sure of protecting me in the event someone tried to intercept me as I made my way home. His assistant, Abu Hassan, asked Safaa the same thing about me.
That Thursday, March 30, after I visited Humineya, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq, gave his weekly press briefing in the Coalition Press Information Center. He stood before American and Iraqi flags wearing pressed fatigues with two stars on his collars. His face remained without expression or emotion, and he spoke in a clipped, rapid-fire style, not in sentences. As he listed his ideas, which he kept simple and repeated, his hands sliced the air to emphasize points in rhythm with his words.
“Our operations continue across Iraq towards the identified end state,” Lynch said. “An Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors and is an ally in the war on terrorism, that has a representative government and respects the human rights of all Iraqis, that has security forces that can maintain domestic order and deny Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists. Now we’re making progress there every day.” He explained that attacks against the coalition forces were concentrated in three provinces: Baghdad, Anbar, and Salah Al-Din. He didn’t say that these areas were where U.S. troops were concentrated and where some of the biggest cities were located. “The enemy,” he said, “specifically the terrorists and foreign fighters, specifically Al Qaeda in Iraq, the face of which is Zarqawi, is now specifically targeting Iraqi security force members and Iraqi police. In fact, the number of attacks against Iraqi Security Forces has increased 35 percent in the last four weeks compared with the previous six months.” General Lynch told the story of Sunni recruits who joined the army even after some recruits had been killed in a suicide bombing. “If that’s not a testimony to the courage and conviction of the Iraqi people, I don’t know what is. They’re united against Zarqawi. As we’ve talked about before, counterinsurgency operations average nine years. The people who will win this counterinsurgency battle against Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the Iraqi people. And indications like that show their courage and their convictions and their commitment to a democratic future. Amazing story.”
He switched slides to a satellite image showing the Mustafa Husseiniya but calling it “Tgt Complex.” Several blocks away was a building the slide described as the Ibrahim Al Khalil Mosque, and even farther away was a building incorrectly identified as the Al Mustafa Mosque. “Last Sunday,” he began, “Iraqi special operations forces had indications that a kidnapping cell was working out of this target complex.” He pointed to the satellite image. “This was led, planned, and executed by Iraqi special operations forces, based on detailed intelligence that a kidnapping cell was occupying this complex.” He pointed at the
I remembered my visit. There were no signs of any gun battle or any fire coming from inside the
“All told,” Lynch continued, “sixteen insurgents were killed, eighteen were detained. We found over thirty- two weapons, and we found the hostage, the innocent Iraqi, who just twelve hours before was walking the streets of Baghdad. He was walking the streets of Baghdad en route to a hospital to visit his brother, who had gunshot wounds. He was kidnapped and beaten in the car en route to this complex.” He pointed to the Mustafa Husseiniya again. “When he got there, they emptied his pockets. They took out his wallet, and in the wallet was a picture of his daughter. He asked for one thing. He said, ‘Please, before you kill me, allow me to kiss the picture of my daughter. That’s all I ask.’ The kidnappers told him, ‘Hey, we gotcha, and if we don’t get twenty thousand dollars sometime soon, you’re dead.’ And they showed him the bare electrical wires that they were gonna use to torture him, and then kill him, and they said, ‘We’re gonna go away and do some drugs, and when we come back, we’re gonna kill you.’ He was beaten. He was tortured. He was tortured with an electrical drill. Twelve hours after he was kidnapped, he was rescued by this Iraqi special operations forces rescue unit. He is indeed most grateful. He is most grateful to be alive, and he is most grateful to the Iraqi special operations forces. The closest mosque was six blocks away. When they got close to the compound, they took fire, and they returned fire. When they got inside the rooms, a room in this compound, they realized this could have been a ‘husenaya,’ a prayer room. They saw a prayer rug. They saw a minaret. They didn’t know about that in advance, but from that room, and from that compound, they were taking fire. In that room, and in that compound, the enemy was holding a hostage, and torturing a hostage. And in that room, and in that compound, they were storing weapons, munitions, and IED explosive devices. Very, very effective operation, planned and executed by Iraqi special operations forces.”
When asked who the enemy the previous Sunday might have been, Lynch responded that “we had no indication, no specific indication, what group these people came from. This was clearly a kidnapping cell that we’d watched for a period of time. There were indications that it was an active cell, and that’s why the operation was planned by the members of the Iraqi special operations forces. Now, I can’t tell you which particular unit or if they were from the Mahdi militia. I don’t know. . . . Extremists, terrorists, criminals—it’s all intertwined. We have reason to believe, and evidence to support, that the terrorists and foreign fighters are indeed using kidnapping as a way to finance their operations. And the story that I told about Sunday night’s kidnapping could be told many more times.”
The news of the American raid was—for once—greeted with delight by Sunnis, who were used to seeing Shiites celebrating when the Americans hit Sunni targets. But what really happened at the
The Americans called the raid Operation Valhalla. It was conducted by the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), commanded by Lieut. Col. Sean Swindell and an Iraqi Special Forces unit they were training. The target was one individual who left shortly before the soldiers arrived, though I was never able to confirm what he was suspected of doing. “We came under fire and at that time had to protect ourselves,” an American participant told me. “Iraqi Special Operations forces and U.S. adviser forces, as we got to the area, came under intense fire from all directions, including within the
One Iraqi Special Operations soldier was wounded. After the raid a senior sheikh from Ur came to complain about the raid to the Americans, along with three or four young “henchmen” of his. “He was one very bad guy,” said the American who took part in the raid. “One henchman asked why we were shooting at certain buildings. We showed him we were taking heavy fire from the
The Americans insisted that immediately after the battle the dead bodies were removed from the
The next day, March 31, I returned to the Mustafa Husseiniya for Friday prayers. The neighborhood was